Harassment issues in sport organizations: Utilitarian, justice, kantian, and existential approaches to moral ontology

The literature discussing harassment issues in sport primarily focuses on sexual harassment and abuse. Discussion of this topic is dominated by definitions of harassment in terms of the biological, psychological, cultural, and organizational rationale for its occurrence and a variety of educational methods to transmit the "facts" of this particular form of misconduct. What appears to be missing thus far in the literature is a comprehensive moral ontological argument regarding harassment. We argue that these issues transcend and subsume sociological, psychological, educational, and biological variables. The purpose of this paper is to consider the variety of forms harassment takes in sport organizations and to discuss harassment from the perspectives of four disparate approaches to moral ontology in order to critically examine this practice.